by Richard Levine Dear Reader, We must be changing, adapting or evolving in significant ways, in order to live with Covid confinement, the effects of a wooden cross being driven into the heart of American democracy, the zero-sum economy, the black & white ballistics of social justice and racial inequality, the sport of mass-shootings […]
Author: Richard Levine
Richard Levine is a retired NYC teacher and the author of Richard Levine: Selected Poems, Contiguous States, and five chapbooks. Now in Contest is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Winner of the 2022 Connecticut Poetry Society Award, he was co-editor of Invasion of Ukraine 2022: Poems. “The Spoils of War” will appear in American Book Review. He is also an Advisory Editor to BigCityLit.com. Website: richardlevine107.com.
The Shrug
n memoriam for Nicholas Johnson I am the final thing, A man learning to sing. Theodore Roethke Time was never your friend, always faster in getting to the same places, always rude to your limps and hitches. What’s the hurry, you’d say? Rushing results in rumpling – clothes, expectations, moods. Let’s stop for a drink. […]
Two Poems
by Richard Levine The Five Words If you tell me, Thank you for your service, and I think you are sincere, especially if I think you are sincere, I will tell you some dark particulars of that service, and once come to light like a stain on porcelain, say, it will spot your heart and […]
Preface
Dedication: “A Call to Armistice” is dedicated to Captain Luis Carlos Montalvan, a decorated Iraq war veteran who became a strong critic of the war. Montalvan served 17 years in the Army, doing two tours in Iraq. He received two Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart. His book, Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the […]
Like and Care
by Richard Levine I think of us, of how, at first, being kind seemed enough. Though we didn’t say it, we thought,if forests grow from red-clover meadows,why not love? But like and care are not strong enoughto send down roots deep enough, or carry water far and high enough to make them more than what they are. And […]
Wade in the Water
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: John, 5:4 I can’t baptize or immunize you with my nod or smile, passing in this pig-pink rural town, where your skin is as double-take out-of-place as the blood-colored tears on a waxwing’s shoulders. And you don’t need protection […]